Don’t be. Read on, and I will share a solution that I think may be the answer to our prayers.

As a website investor whose portfolio gets most of the traffic from Google, updates are always like going through an intersection without looking left and right at the same time. This time, however, I got a heads up. There’s a company that promises to check your website, your Core Web Vitals, and get them in order before the June update. Originally, it was scheduled for May, but it was postponed on April 19th, for mid-June).

It does that by sorting out your caching, database optimization, plugin optimization, image optimization, and code cleanup. They don’t just take care of your Core Web Vitals for Google, they promise to speed up your website. And now the best part, if they don’t succeed, they give you your money back.

Is website speed really that important?

First of all, we already wrote about the importance of website speed. Second, Core Web Vitals is not just about speed! Google is taking it one step further with this June update. They say if Core Web Vitals are not in order, your website could suffer a downgrade in the SERP! This is definitely one of those “Didn’t you get the memo?” situations.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Instead of providing my own explanation of what are Core Web Vitals, I’ll just share what Google published on the topic. After all, they are the ones that came up with the term in the first place. So, in order to avoid any misrepresentation, here’s what Google published on their website:

Core Web Vitals are the subset of Web Vitals that apply to all web pages, should be measured by all site owners, and will be surfaced across all Google tools. Each of the Core Web Vitals represents a distinct facet of the user experience, is measurable in the field, and reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome.

The metrics that make up Core Web Vitals will evolve over time. The current set for 2020 focuses on three aspects of the user experience—loading, interactivity, and visual stability—and includes the following metrics (and their respective thresholds):

Source: https://web.dev/vitals/

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.
• First Input Delay (FID): measures interactivity. To provide a good user experience, pages should have a FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1.

I understand you could have just (or maybe you already did) read this on Google’s website, so let’s move on.

This June, “coming to a theater near you”

Well, not exactly a theater, but I suspect it’s going to be very interesting to see how some websites move up or down after this Google Update. I suspect for some it’s going to be a thriller / horror type of a situation, while some may find their way laughing out of this update.

I don’t know about you, but I like comedy much more than horror. So why not get your website in order? And come prepared for the storm that’s coming? Originally, I wrote May the fourth be with you, during this update, but Google took that away from me by postponing the update for June. Since “the force” can’t be with us on June, who can help us?

Now what?

In case you are like me, and you don’t like to get your hands dirty. If you have no idea about the LCP, FID and CLS… And your website does not score well on the Core Web Vitals test, I have a solution for you.

Speedy.Site just launched, and after the first initial clients they have several very promising “before and after” examples. Not only that, I was one of the first test subjects with one of my websites. Now naturally, I take care of my websites, so it wasn’t a big break change. But, even with that, there was a nice upgrade, and it was registered with the Lighthouse check. If you need a reminder on what is Lighthouse, and Google PageSpeed Insights read this article.

Before and after

Photos are always worth a thousand words. Now mind you, I am showing here the before photos I personally took (yeah, I am skeptical), but the Speedy.site team will take before and after photos as well, and will deliver them to your inbox after the job is complete.

As well as an event log of the work they have done. Now before you go running away, don’t worry, they will backup the website before they make any changes. And also, I would recommend that you have some sort of backup running always anyway. It’s basics 101.

Below you can see, I took 3 separate screenshots, just to be sure it’s not an accident. The score was around 70 for desktop, and 30 for mobile. It’s not that bad, but obviously, there’s room for improvement. One more time, just to be clear, all these screenshots below are the “before” ratings. On the left for desktop, on the right for mobile.

Before the speedy.site optimization

After the speedy.site optimization

Now let’s look at the PageSpeed Insights numbers after the completed work. Again, there’s no work involved on your end. Just make the order on their website, and provide login details to your WordPress website.

Important thing to note when you are making these checks. You will not get the same rating if you are checking with or without WWW, and if you are checking HTTP or HTTPS. We all now the benefits of having an SSL, but having an SSL will slow down the website by miliseconds. And then if you check HTTP version, you have one more redirect, the one from HTTP to HTTPS.

So, without further ado, here are the after screenshots.

Few things to go through here.

1. The website was not that bad, after all, it’s my website and you could say I have a little bit of experience with building websites.
2. Sometimes the websites can’t be further optimized without changing the theme. For example, if you have a slider that’s heavy like mine, it will take a shot at your ratings, especially the more sensitive mobile version
3. As you can see, the numbers are different each time, even though these three tests were performed during the course of around 15 minutes. (Taking the test, saving the website screenshot, switch to mobile, take the second screenshot, repeat 3 times)
4. We see a 30%-40% improvement from “70” highest to “90” lowest, “67” lowest to “94” highest on the desktop version, and 70%-105% improvement from “34” highest to “57” lowest, “30” lowest to “61” highest on mobile version.
5. At one comparison we have a massive 105% improvement from score 30 to score 61 on mobile.

In case you want to test the website yourself, or just load it on your computer or mobile, you can see the domain name in the screenshots above. Also, the website we were working on is for sale. So there you have it, if you buy this website you just got a free upgrade that’s worth…. How much is this massive improvement worth?

How much does this optimization cost?

Price is a one-time payment of $299. However, since you read the entire article, I’ll presume you really need to improve the numbers on your website. So, if you use the promo code below, three things will happen.

1. You will get a 50$ discount (enter the promo code WEBMASTER50), so your optimization will cost you $249
2. You will get 6 months of webmaster.ninja red belt package (value $114), just email webmaster.ninja support with proof of payment
3. I will get a 25% commission on the $249 sale (full affiliate disclosure)

Order Speedy.Site here! And don’t forget to enter the promo code WEBMASTER50